By AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Mar 14 – A Russian cosmonaut and two US astronauts arrived Friday at the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, five months after the failed launch of a rocket carrying two of the passengers.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and his Russian colleague Alexey Ovchinin, who both survived a dramatically aborted Soyuz launch last year, were joined on the smoothly-executed trip by NASA astronaut Christina Koch.

The rocket blasted off without incident from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and docked at the ISS less than six hours later, more than 400 kilometers (249 miles) above the Earth at 01:01 GMT, a few minutes ahead of schedule.

During a live broadcast via high-definition cameras aboard the ISS, the mission commander Ovchinin reported that the mooring mechanism was engaged. A NASA commentator then confirmed the “capture.”

The liftoff was closely watched after the two men’s space journey was cut short in October when a technical problem with their Soyuz rocket triggered a launch abort two minutes into the flight.

Russia’s space industry has in recent years suffered a lot of mishaps including the loss of cargo spacecraft and numerous satellites.

Ovchinin, who spent six months at the ISS during a previous mission in 2016, has been keen to play down the drama of the October emergency landing.

The abort was “a little disappointing” after preparations that lasted a year-and-a-half but also “an interesting and needed experience” that tested the depth of the space programme’s preparedness, he said.

Koch, Hague and Ovchinin’s flight was being closely watched for another reason too.

SpaceX’s successful test launch to the ISS of its Dragon vehicle has challenged an eight-year monopoly on travel to the space station enjoyed by Russia ever since NASA stopped launches of the Space Shuttle.

Speaking to reporters, the trio and their three-man backup crew stressed cooperation rather than competition following the Dragon mission, seen by some as the dawn of an era of commercial space travel driven by businessmen such as Elon Musk who owns SpaceX.

Koch, a 40-year-old space rookie, called the SpaceX success a “great example of what we’ve been doing for a very long time.”

“And that is cooperating among partners and making things that are very difficult look easy,” she said.

– ‘First spacewalks’ –

There had already been one successful manned launch to the ISS since the failed Soyuz mission.